Quote:
Originally Posted by Drkshadow03
Exactly, I have to work at it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulclem
The names/places really do sound made up.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Drkshadow03
Exactly, I have to work at it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulclem
The names/places really do sound made up.
Haha I followed the link for "fracturedcity.org" and it took me to random house.com.
Package came today, but I missed it. So, I'll pick up the book tomorrow on the way home.
I just got my copy today so I am little behind. Because I am not in the habit of reading Crime/Detective novels I was at first a little uncertain about that aspect of the book and the idea that the murder of a woman, and efforts to solve the crime being the event which sets everything else in motion, but thus far I am enjoying the narration of it.
The fact that it is set in an alternative reality does help and I like the way in which there are strange things starting to seep in already. I am quite curious about the presence of the old woman who he says he was not suppose to have seen.
I have to say when I started reading I could not tell if the place names were in fact real places of if they were made up, I thought they had an Eastern European sound to them. I also found their term for an unknown person to be curious "Fulana Detail" In the US we use Jane Doe. It is difficult getting use to some of the unknown words and slang, as when they started talking about chewers and feld at the beginning of the book and such things like that.
I am curious to see what will happen as the story progresses.
Ha! I knew that Besźel sounded vaguely Hungarian. It, as a matter of fact, turns out to mean "to speak" in the aforementioned language. Not sure what it signifies as I haven't really moved one with the book.
Does Ul Quoma also mean something? In some language I can't pinpoint right now? - it looks Semitic, but I'm not entirely sure.
/haven't really found the time to concentrate on the book due to the exams, but soon I will. Soon...
The term unsee/unseen certainly is an interesting one, since it is not an every day expression, at least not one I am familiar with or have heard before. And it does seem to pop up quite often within the story.
It seems to me that it means something akin to when you see something without actually taking particular notice of it, sort of like the visual version of hearing someone without listening to them. You register the sound of their voice but do not really pay attention to the words they are saying. So you see what is around you, at the same time you are not really taking it in.
I think it also has a double meaning considering that there does seem to be this alternative/parallel city of which the people are not supposed to see and yet people seem to be aware of its existence.
I'm still figuring out the whole see/unsee thing. It seems like something they can easily control. to unsee seems like it has to be more than just ignoring it. The main character has to avoid bumping into things/people while unseeing them. So how can unsee mean to ignore?
Yes, the more I progress into the story the more this idea of unseeing is coming into things, and deeper meanings develop behind it. It seems to me as if people must train themselves, or learn/adapt over time to make the conscious choice not to see Ul Qoma.
It is like they have to deny to themselves the existence of this other city even though they know it is there, they cannot allow themselves to acknowledge and thus to see it. And if they do by chance happen to see something from Ul Qoma they have to forget that they ever saw it, and convince themselves they did not see it.
I am a bit confused by this whole Ul Qoma thing at the moment, as I cannot tell, does it actually exist simultaneously within Beszel, like are the two cities residing within the exact same location at the same time?
Because it seems that at moments Ul Qoma bleeds into Baszel.
It's an odd experience reading a crime fiction with such an unusual context. Even the idea of unseeing is relateable to our experience, but to have this institutionalised unseeing embodied in 2 intertwined nations within what is usually a familiar genre is a new experience.
It's not unusual in his two other books that I've read either, though the oddness comes from the sheer variety and imaginativeness of the species and the richness of the descriptions.
I'm about 70% finished. It's getting good, but (and without spoiling) I'm wondering if all this isn't some kind of fakery, why would Fulana be getting letters from those people? That part seems odd. And Tyador seemed awfully quick to become the "hero". Why?
I've finished the book and I think it's well worth it. He's great at writing about city chaos and the ineresting multitudes in, for example, Perdido St. Station. This is a bit of a departure from that with this conceit of ultra order embodied in the two cities.
I think his crime thriller writing in the conventional sense is convincing with tension, mystery, twists and turns married to suitable cop detail. As I would have expected, he does introduce an unusual angle with the two cities, Breach and Orciny.
I am a bit behind in my reading, but I have to say I think the story is really picking up and getting more progressively interesting as it goes along. I still have some confusion about Ul Qoma and Breach, but I think I am starting to develop more of an understanding the more I read and getting a better idea of things.
I find it quite interesting that Borlu was the one who really wanted to push to get the case classified as Breath, to allow them to handle it, and yet now he finds himself wanting to pursue investigation of the case. I suppose part of it may be just his natural detective instinct in which it is just second nature of him to be curious and to want to try and solve things, and find out what really happened, and the more he does uncover, the more intriguing it all seems to become.
I am also beginning to suspect that this Orcinay may not be as much as a fairy tale as people have been led to believe.
Just from the conceits of the genre I would expect it not to quite be a fairy tale, but also not to be exactly what the stories say.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark Muse
I'm only 1/3 into the book though, way behind.
Edit: Just in general thoughts about the unseeing thing, I think Paul is on the right track with the comment on how we ignore things deliberately. There is a scene where they interview the guy from the unificationist cell, and Borlu thinks of the social taboo of seeing what should be unseen, that everyone does it all the time. It really reminded me a lot of Foucault's ideas from Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, and I think there's certainly an element of the Panopticon in the lives of the characters.
Edit2: From the wiki on Discipline and Punish:
"The Panopticon was the ultimate realization of a modern disciplinary institution. It allowed for constant observation characterized by an "unequal gaze"; the constant possibility of observation. Perhaps the most important feature of the panopticon was that it was specifically designed so that the prisoner could never be sure whether they were being observed at any moment. The unequal gaze caused the internalization of disciplinary individuality, and the docile body required of its inmates. This means one is less likely to break rules or laws if they believe they are being watched, even if they are not. Thus, prison, and specifically those that follow the model of the Panopticon, provide the ideal form of modern punishment. Foucault argues that this is why the generalized, "gentle" punishment of public work gangs gave way to the prison. It was the ideal modernization of punishment, so its eventual dominance was natural."
I really enjoyed the explination which was given in the book about edxzactly what is and what is not Breach, as that really heleped to clear some things up which were still a bit confussing.
I am looking forward now to reading about things on the Ul Qoma side and what that is going to be like.
This is like Sartre's keyhole theory where a voyeur does not realise his voyeuristic nature when he is looking through a keyhole at something until he himself realises he is being observed doing it.Quote:
Originally Posted by OrphanPip